


Four Times Alec and Magnus Didn’t Adopt a Child, and One Time They Did

by MouseBouse



Series: Four Times [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 4+1 Things, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6546688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MouseBouse/pseuds/MouseBouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Alec and Magnus welcome a new member to their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Time – Wedding Night

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't yet, I advise you to read the [Date](6488764) and [Marriage](6518770) parts before reading this one.
> 
> "awww. this is so sappy even I will be having hard time out-sappying it." - [of_dreamdust](/users/of_dreamdust)  
> Thank you, my wonderful beta :*
> 
> And as always, you can find me on [Tumblr](http://mousebouse.tumblr.com).

***

“We’ll do the traditional vows next month and everyone will cry at how cute we are.”

***

Alec had been right. There was crying, there were comments on their cuteness, there were smiles and hugs and congratulations. 

It had been a quick ceremony: the officiant had recited the vows for them to repeat, the wedding bands had been placed, the kiss had sealed the deal, the clapping had been loud in their ears.

Now, after they’d moved to the reception hall and had their first dance, after the meal and some more obligatory dancing, after Alec’s incredibly drunk best man’s announcement that he and Clary were expecting a baby, after all that, Alec and Magnus were finally in their room in the hotel adjacent to the venue.

“Oh God, it feels good to be alone!” Alec exclaimed, one hand already tugging at the black bow-tie around his neck, the other undoing the buttons of his white-and-gold suit jacket.

“I know! I love a good party, but this was exhausting!” His fian--- _husband_ said, kicking his shoes off, the golden glitter in his hair glimmering under the bright light from the ceiling when he moved.

“This might sound, I don’t know, silly? But you know how everyone always thinks the first thing newlyweds do when they’re finally in private is have sex? I’m pretty sure they all just fall asleep, like, instantly!”

Magnus huffed out a laugh before replying, “Is that your way of telling me I’m not getting lucky on our wedding night? Because if so, I’m completely okay with that. I don’t think I’m awake enough to do much.”

“Well, I usually do most of the work, anyway,” Alec teased, and was rewarded by Magnus’s tie in his face.

“So, Clary’s pregnant?” Magnus asked, taking off his suit jacket, one of the golden sequins falling off as he did.

“Yeah, she told me a few days ago that she wanted to surprise Jace today. I guess she didn’t count on him being drunk and telling everyone.”

Alec was now lying on the bed, his back against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankles. Magnus joined him, intertwining their fingers and smiling when he saw the ring on Alec’s hand.

“A while ago she said they had a similar problem to the one we had last year, when everyone was asking when we’d get married. Apparently, Jace’s family was very impatient when it came to a new member of the family,” Magnus said before yawning and lowering his head to Alec’s chest, the man’s heartbeat steady under his ear. Alec kissed the top of his head, sniffling as a bit of glitter from Magnus’s hair came into contact with his nose.

“Well, at least no one will ever ask us that,” he mumbled sleepily and Magnus chuckled.

“You really think that? You know adoption is a thing, right?”

When there was no response, he angled his head up to see Alec asleep. He moved slowly, careful not to wake his husband, and turned the lights off before crawling back into his spot and pulling the covers over them.


	2. Second Time – Baby

“He looks like his father!”

“No, those are Clary’s eyes!”

“But that’s a Herondale nose.”

“What do you think, Alec?”

Honestly, all Alec saw was a baby. And it looked exactly like any other baby. Tiny, wrinkly, wrapped in so many layers he was sure it would have a heat stroke.

When he said that, though, it was like he’d kicked a puppy – daggers flew from the eyes of everyone who heard him, and Clary’s aunt, Dorothy, Dorothea, something like that, said, “ _He_ , Alec. And he looks like a Fray.”

“ _He_ ,” Alec emphasized the word just like the lady had, “is a week old. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand anything I’m saying, let alone the concept of gender.”

“It’s obvious you’re not a parent,” Dorothea’s husband said from beside her, and Alec should have seen that coming. “Are you and your husband thinking of adopting? It would be nice for little Will here to have someone to grow up with.”

As if on cue, the baby, _Will_ , started crying, or rather, wailing, and Alec used the opportunity to slip away, searching the house for a place to hide. He finally reached the study and, only after closing the door, realized he was not alone.

“Clary. What… why are you here? Or why are you _there_?” He asked as she came out from her hiding spot behind the bookcase.

“I didn’t know it was you. I just heard the door open and had to take cover,” she replied, moving closer, and Alec could see her eyes were bloodshot, her face paler than usual.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“How about the truth now?”

She looked at him for a second, assessing if he really wanted to know. Then she started. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Will is constantly crying, and having these random relatives and in-laws passing through the house all day really isn’t helping. They’re annoying as hell, and they’re all giving me contradictory advice on how to raise _my_ child, and nothing I do is ever right, and Will is ten days old and Jace’s mom asked me yesterday if we’re planning on having _another_ baby anytime soon, and I really just want everyone to leave us alone,” she said, all in one breath, before becoming aware of the words that left her lips. When she did, however, she clasped a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening.

“Wow, tell me how you really feel.” Alec said, smiling, hoping to lighten the mood. 

“I just… I just really need a break,” she finished, her shoulders slouching, and Alec walked up to her and hugged her tightly.

“All I know about children is what I learned when Max was a baby. And back then I wasn’t even a teenager yet, so my knowledge is pretty limited,” he started, and felt Clary smile against his chest. “But what I can tell you is something you already said yourself: that out there is _your_ child. So it is your job to raise him however you see fit. If someone doesn’t like it, tell them to back off!”

“But most of them have been through it, they---“

“No. Just because someone had a kid doesn’t mean they should have a say in how you raise yours. If that were the case, my parents would have listened to my uncle when he suggested they send me to one of those ‘turn you straight’ camps,” he shuddered at the memory.

There was a knock on the door then, and Jace poked his head into the room. “So I see Alec discovered your hiding place, honey. Listen, one of you has to help me, Aunt Imogen is telling me about all the problems she had while breastfeeding my cousins. I don’t want to know. Please, save me!”

Alec looked down at Clary who seemed to be feeling a bit better, but was still in no condition to go talk to people, so he made a decision. One that he’d probably regret later. “Okay, I’ll sacrifice myself and go listen to people telling me how Magnus and I need to have a baby, like, yesterday, and you two stay here and push that bookcase to the door after I leave so no one can come in. You really need to get a lock for this room.”

With that, he exited the study, and in the half an hour before Clary showed up, four more people asked him about his plans regarding offspring.

 

“Don’t let them get to you, Alexander,” Magnus’s voice came through the speakers, his face on the screen pixelated. He was in Milan, promoting his new collection, and even though he’d only been gone a week, Alec was incredibly grateful for technology, and he would have to thank whoever had thought of Skype. “It’s none of their business whether we have kids or not.”

“I know, it’s just… I’ve always wanted children, you know that, but they make me want to never have them just out of spite,” Alec replied, annoyed, his feet resting on the coffee table, the laptop balanced on his knees. “The same thing happened when we were dating and everyone was obsessing over our wedding. It’s like they want us to fit into this happy-little-gay-family idea they have.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I’ve already destroyed that plan. I’m not gay.”

“Like my eighty-year-old grandma could ever grasp the concept of bisexuality.”

“Hey, you never know. She was in her twenties during the ‘60s, and that was an interesting time. Who knows what she got up to?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before someone asks about the math when it comes to Alec's grandma's age: They met in 2016, were together for 4 years before getting married, so 2020, the Clace baby was born at the end of '20, beginning of '21.


	3. Third Time – Playground

“William, if you fall off those monkey bars, your mother will kill me. Please don’t give your mother a reason to kill me,” Magnus said as he saw his… well, the child called them _uncles_ , so that would kind of make him a _nephew_ , moving hastily across the jungle gym, start to finish, then back, then again.

The boy was only five years old, and already he was such a handful. Before the monkey bars, there was “If you swing any harder, you’ll make a full circle on that swing,” and “Don’t eat from the sandbox, do I even need to explain why?” For her birthday, Clary had gotten a full spa treatment voucher that needed to be used ASAP, and Jace was working today, so Magnus offered to babysit Will. He was rethinking his decision, though, as Alec was home sick with the flu, and Magnus was now left alone with the boy. 

“Wow, your son is great up there! Mine is nine and has trouble with those bars, but yours… he’s what, six? He doesn’t seem scared at all, and he’s moving so—gracefully, I guess?”

Magnus turned toward the source of the voice. A tall blonde woman was standing next to him, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head, arms crossed on her chest as she looked out onto the playground.

“He’s five, actually. It’s way too early for him to be able to do that, I’ve been saying that for a while. And he’s not mine. I’m just babysitting.” 

The woman looked him up and down for a second, her eyes zeroing in on the wedding ring on his hand. “Oh. So you and your wife don’t have any?”

“My _husband_ , actually,” he said, wondering why she even cared or how it was any of her business. Still, he answered, “And no, we don’t.”

“Huh. Too bad, you seem to be good with kids,” she said before turning on her heels and moving toward a child that was waiting for her by the seesaws. 

This usually only happened to Alec. Random people asking him personal questions like they had every right to know the answer. In all honesty, Alec talked about these situations so often, Magnus had been sure at least half of them were made up. Now, though, he wasn’t sure.

 

“So she just turned and left?” Alec asked later, sitting down next to Magnus on the couch and giving him one of the two glasses of wine that he was holding.

“Yup. It was as if she’d materialized out of thin air to ask me why I don’t have kids and then she was gone again,” Magnus replied, taking a sip.

“Do you believe me now that that constantly happens?”

“I don’t get why, though. Like, what do people accomplish by being invasive like that?”

“Maybe they don’t like the way their lives turned out and now want to live vicariously through other people,” Alec shrugged. 

“Who knows. Either way, we have to live with those questions for a bit longer,” Magnus said and felt Alec freeze next to him.

“A _bit_ longer?”

“Or a while. Whatever. But I would like to have kids with you one day, regardless of when others want us to have them. I thought you wanted that, too?” Magnus asked, confused.

“I do, just… Maybe let’s make it a _while_ longer.”

 

‘A while longer’ turned out to be about two months long.

“Magnus?” Alec called as he entered the living room.

It was a Sunday afternoon and Alec had just finished cleaning up after lunch. Magnus was sitting on the sofa, his sketch pad in his lap, a look of concentration on his face as his hand moved over the paper. When he heard his husband’s voice, though, he put the pencil aside and looked up at him.

“Yes, darling?”

“I want to talk to you about something,” Alec said, sitting down next to him, nervously playing with his wedding band.

“Is everything okay?” Magnus asked, reaching out and putting his hand over Alec’s, squeezing to stop him from fidgeting.

“I've been doing some research lately,” he answered before taking a deep breath and continuing. “According to ccainstitute.org, around 400,000 children in the U.S. are in the foster care system, and over 100,000 of those are eligible for adoption, but a third of them will spend more than three years in foster care before being adopted.”

“Okay? Why—do you mean…?”

“I mean, Magnus Lightwood-Bane, would you like to adopt a child with me?”


	4. Fourth Time – Research

It turns out that deciding to adopt a child and actually adopting one were two very different things, and the time that passed between them was usually measured in years.

“Okay, so what exactly is Pre-Service Training?” Magnus asked.

“It’s basically several sessions that we need to attend where they tell us about how to best integrate a new child into our lives, and help us understand, y’know, what the child might have been through,” Alec replied. “We’ll also get to meet other parents and people who work for the adoption agency.”

They had both been doing a lot of research in the past couple of months, but Alec was the one with more knowledge; Magnus was sure he got up in the middle of the night to read up more on the topic.

“And then our application is complete?”

“Kind of. That’s when we meet our caseworker. And I’m warning you now, you need to be nice to them. They’ll be a huge part of this whole process.”

“When am I ever not nice?” Magnus looked offended. Alec just glared at him until he said, “Okay, point taken. But I will be nice, I promise. This is important to me, too, honey.”

 

“Six months?!” Alec exclaimed.

“ _Up to_ six months,” Magnus said. “But you have to admit it makes sense for it to take that long. They have to interview us, check our backgrounds and references, our daily routines, there are a lot of things. Besides, it’s called a Home _Study_ , not Home Cramming-the-Night-Before-the-Exam.”

“I know, I know, but I still didn’t think it would take that long,” Alec responded, sighing. “And did you see they do criminal background checks?”

“Do you have a criminal record I don’t know about?”

“I don’t. But _you_ do. Peru ringing any bells?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not the type of crime they’re referring to. It’s more about violent behavior, and child abuse in particular.”

“Yeah, but I’m still nervous. There are so many little details that they check, and if we mess up only one of them…” Alec trailed off, suddenly looking terrified.

“Alec, everything will be okay. Alright? We’ve got nothing to hide, we won’t mess anything up. And we’re not in a hurry, right? So if, after these six months of the Home Study, we have to wait another six months, or a year, or five years, we will.”

 

“Look at these two,” Magnus said from behind his laptop. Alec moved closer to see what his husband was looking at – it was a photo of two girls, big grins on their faces, arms around each other. “They’re twins, they’re five, and Catarina thinks they might be a good fit for us.”

Catarina, the caseworker in charge of Alec and Magnus’s application to adopt, was a wonderful woman. From the moment they met her, she had been nothing but supportive, guiding them every step of the way. They were currently in the middle of the matching process – their information was available to other caseworkers who could see if they were a good match for the kids in their care, and Catarina would occasionally send them links to profiles of children she found suitable. The two of them would spend a lot of time on AdoptUSKids, too, and that’s what Magnus has been doing for the last two hours. 

“Oh, they’re gorgeous! And it’s just the two of them?” Alec inquired.

“They have a baby brother, but there’s no picture of him yet.”

At the beginning, Catarina had asked if they wanted to adopt one child or if they would be interested in a sibling group. Most children in foster care had siblings, and keeping them together was a priority for agencies. They hadn’t even thought about it until that point, but right then and there they said they wouldn’t mind adopting more than one child. They were also open to any age group, from infants to teenagers.

“Wait, Cat just sent another email!” Magnus opened it quickly, the subject reading **This is the one**. The only thing inside was a link. He clicked it and it led them to the profile of an eleven-year-old boy, his dark skin in a nice contrast with the pink shirt he was wearing in the picture. He wasn’t looking at the camera, his eyes focused on something out of frame.

He glanced at Alec whose eyes were glued to the screen for another moment before he looked Magnus in the eyes and said, “Call. Catarina. _Now_!”


	5. Fifth Time, First Child – Rafael

Tessa and Jem Carstairs were a lovely couple. They were both in their forties, both working in education – Tessa teaching English and Jem Music. Over the last decade or so, they have fostered several children, their house currently home to three: two sixteen-year-olds and _him_. The boy that was the cause of Alec and Magnus’s visit.

Catarina had warned them of the importance of this meeting – Pre-Placement visits provided good opportunity to learn more about the child, and gave that child a chance to get to know their future adoptive parents on their own turf.

So they had scheduled an appointment through the agency, and they were now in the Carstairs’ living room, talking to the couple about the boy.

“I know you were already told about this, but I feel I should point it out again. He is… a very anxious child in general. And he can't talk to strangers,” Tessa said.

Alec chimed in, “Yes, we were told he has Selective Mutism. But we are curious how it manifests in his case. We know there are different types and different therapies.”

Jem was the one to reply, “Well, when he was first placed with us, he couldn’t speak to either one for almost two weeks. Now it takes a bit less time for him to talk to people he’d recently met, but don’t pressure him into talking. He communicates through facial expressions and gestures a lot, and he’s been using simple phrases in ASL lately.”

“Don’t expect him to smile at you or make eye contact right away, either,” Tessa added just as they heard footsteps on the stairs. “Here he is now.”

The boy walked into the room, his head bowed slightly, hands curled into fists by his side. Tessa walked over to him, whispering something into his ear, and when he nodded, she turned to Magnus and Alec, urging them to come closer. They did, both crouching next to the two, wanting to be at the same eye-level even if actual eye-contact wasn’t a given at this point. 

Magnus was the first of them to speak. “Hello, Rafael.”

The boy looked up from under his lashes, not raising his head.

“I’m Magnus, this is my husband, Alec. Do you know why we’re here?”

Rafael nodded, before tugging on Tessa’s sleeve. When she lowered her head to him, he whispered to her, causing her to smile.

“He says that you’re very colorful, Magnus.”

Alec chuckled. “That’s what I said the first time I saw him, too.” 

 

It took two more visits for Rafael to speak to them. At the end of their third visit, he smiled at them and asked if they would be coming over again soon. 

With Jem and Tessa, discussions of medical appointments and school records took place. The couple also suggested a few things that might make the boy feel more at home in Alec and Magnus’s apartment. And so, his favorite color adorned the walls of soon-to-be-his room, the book that Tessa used to read to him before bed waiting on the bedside table, photos of his foster parents and the foster siblings he’d had on the desk.

 

A while later, homecoming day had finally arrived. Rafael was shown to his room by the guys, and two balls of fluff were waiting on his bed. Luckily, he seemed to be one of the rare people neither the Chairman nor Church hated, as they let him pet them and pick them up, and he carried both of them around while exploring his new home.

A lot of websites that Alec had browsed in the last year and a half had advised parents to write a letter to the child describing the day they first came to live with them, telling them about their feelings, thoughts, and worries, and saving that letter to share with them on anniversaries of that day or any other meaningful occasions. So that’s what Alec and Magnus did. 

One day, years from now, when Rafael gets home and sees his acceptance letters from three Ivy League colleges, there will also be two pink envelopes waiting on his bed. Both will be addressed to him, one in Alec’s tiny, barely legible handwriting, and the other in Magnus’s cursive script. Both will make him tear up and go find his fathers, giving over the letter that he himself had written on that day – his caseworker had suggested it, too.

But before all that, a lot else will happen. Many problems will arise, many fights will ensue. Many deep conversations will take place, many laughs will be shared. Who knows, Rafael might even become an older brother at some point. Maybe Chairman Meow will grow tired of having birthday parties and decide to stay in with Church one year. Maybe their humans will stop spending their anniversaries at Pandemonium, remembering their first date from so long ago. 

The only thing that Alec and Magnus could be certain of at this point was that this was definitely _not_ ‘the worst that could have happened’. But it may just be the best.

**Author's Note:**

> All I know about adoption in the USA was learned from [AdoptUSKids](http://www.adoptuskids.org), all I know about Selective Mutism was learned from [Selective Mutism Center](http://www.selectivemutismcenter.org). If you have experience with either and see I got something incredibly wrong in this work, please, let me know.


End file.
